Performance as a challenge

Just imagine the automotive industry developing new car models, but to save development costs all performance requirements are ignored, such as fuel consumption, acceleration, top speed, service intervals, etc. Imagine the aircraft industry or the computer industry developing new models the same way.

Of course this has never happened and will never happen. If improved performance wasn't requested or appreciated by the customers we would still have cars like the T-Ford and the computer departments would still use vacuum tube computers like 60 years ago.

Ever-better performance is in reality what drives most industries from the very beginning.

Get ahead or get overrun!?!

The automotive industry today spends an ever increasing amount of time and resources on the digital concept and autonomous vehicles or self-driving cars are now in the pipe.

This is the biggest software performance challenge ever and the requirements are enormous. We could call it extreme performance requirements. The software must identify of any possible traffic situation in a few milliseconds and act accordingly. Furthermore the software must work flawlessly regardless of driving conditions like speed, traffic density, road conditions, or weather conditions, such as high or low temperature, rain, snow, ice, etc.

But it doesn't stop there the technology of autonomous cars will to some extent rely on interaction with other autonomous cars. Just imagine if an autonomous car doesn't communicate anymore how will other autonomous cars handle such situations? The hardware and software must consequently be extremely reliable and robust.

Of course it will not happen in one single step. There are currently five defined levels of driving automation where only the fifth level means full automation with no need or even possibility for driver assistance.

But despite the complexity, the self-driving car concept will open completely new markets for cars with more sales and higher profit margins for the automotive industry. Therefore the self-driving car is regarded as the road into the future.

And other industries follow ...

Autonomous trucks are in the pipe

The automotive industry working on autonomous vehicles are not limited to cars. Truck manufacturers are in many cases further ahead.

Autonomous trucks will reduce the need for truck drivers. This in turn will enable trucks to drive continuously, i.e. make a transport end-to-end without a single stop

For transport companies, it means better utilization of trucks and thus more profitable transports.

Autonomous ships are also in the pipe

Autonomous vehicles are not the only industry on this track. Autonomous ships are also in the pipe.

Autonomous ships will will reduce the size of the crews. In the shipping industry this also means more profitable transports.

Get ahead of your competitors with better performance

The transport industry is just one example where software that meets extreme performance requirements will make a difference.

With solutions to extreme performance requirements your products will get ahead of the competition and bring new opportunities, new markets, and new revenue flows.

Even if it is a long way to go the challenge is to get ahead of the competitors or get overrun.

Autonomous vehicles currently have some more issues that must be resolved:

One is how to certify an autonomous vehicle for public roads. This will require first of all new standards for performance measurements, but also a large number of performance test cases and requirements on performance test benches.
It will also require standards for reliability and life time of all sensors required for receiving and sending information to the SW application of an autonomous vehicle to act on.
Last but not least all legal issues. Who is responsible for what in case of an accident?

You don't need to develop autonomous cars to win on excellent performance!

The benefits of software with excellent performance can be found in almost every application and the reasons are simple.

When more and more types of applications use to the same type of hardware and software, the only way to make a real difference is through better performance.

This has been an ongoing change for many decades, but the visibility of software with excellent performance has become evident on a global scale in the connected world.